Dieting and Book Give-Away

I found a really neat website the other day that I thought I would share. It's called The Waistline Test. Now, this might sound like a dieting tool...and it is! But it's for your manuscript. You can "take the test" by entering up to 1500 words of your text into the text box. The test will then "measure" if your text is "lean," "fit & trim," "needs toning," "flabby" or is about to have a "heart attack" in five different areas: be-verbs, abstract nouns, prepositions, adjectives & adverbs and the use of it, this, that, there. Pretty handy to see where your story needs work. 

I entered the first couple hundred words of a short story I've never finished (just lost the spark for it) and this is what I came up with:

be- verbs	abstract nouns	prepositions	adjectives &adverbs	it, this that, there
lean	lean	lean	lean	lean
fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim	fit&trim
needs toning	needs toning	needs toning	needs toning	needs toning
flabby	flabby	flabby	flabby	flabby
heart attack	heart attack	heart attack	heart attack	heart attack

I never wanted to come back here . Five years ago I had left Arkansas behind with all of my redneck sensibilities , my farewell a finger in the air . But here I was back in the Natural State , sucked in by a force as inescapable as a black hole . I knew I should have never answered that phone call . I had let it ring as a sign of petty defiance . The answering machine picked up . My accent- free drone of “ This is Kevin . Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible” didn’ t fool anyone— least of all my mother . “ Kevin ? This is your Mama . Pick up . I know you’ re there . ” Rolling my eyes , I picked up . “ Hey , Mom . ” “ How come you never answer your phone ? ” “ I couldn’ t get to it in time , ” I lied . She wasn’ t convinced . I had never been able to fool her . Sometimes I thought it was the mother- instinct , but perhaps she just knew me too well . “ So , what’ s up ? ” I asked , walking the few feet across my flat to stare down at the congested traffic below . I wasn’ t really interested in what she had to say , sure that it would be a combination of grandchildren news and thinly- veiled suggestions that I wasn’ t getting any younger . But she surprised me . “ Robert had a heart attack . You need to come home . ” The first sentence concerned me . The second one irritated me .  

Overall, the writing sample is fit and trim

Yeah, it messed up all my formatting, but that's not the point. The point is it visually highlights your weaknesses. Cool, eh? I found it particularly handy with my query, since it is just one of the things that needs to be as tight as possible. 

Also, I just wanted to let you know that Janice Hardy is giving away an ARC copy of Blue Fire, the next book in her Shifter series. I haven't had the chance to pick up Shifter, yet, but it's definitely on the top of my To-Read list. 

According to the Shifter's blurb: Nya is an orphan struggling for survival in a city crippled by war. She is also a Taker--with her touch, she can heal injuries, pulling pain from another person into her own body. But unlike her sister, Tali, and the other Takers who become Healer's League apprentices, Nya's skill is flawed: She can't push that pain into pynvium, the enchanted metal used to store it. All she can do is shift it into another person, a dangerous skill that she must keep hidden from forces occupying her city. If discovered, she'd be used as a human against her own people.

Rumors of another war make Nya's life harder, forcing her to take desperate risks just to find work and food. She pushes her luck too far and exposer her secret to a pain merchant eager to use her shifting ability for his own sinister purposes. At first Nya refuses, but when Tali and other League Healers mysteriously disappear, she's faced with some difficult choices. As her father used to say, principles are a bargain at any price; but how many will Nya have to sell to get Tali back alive?

Sounds pretty cool, eh? Check it out!

EDIT: I think I  fixed the link to Ms. Hardy's give-away.